National ATM Council asks MasterCard to delay EMV liability shift

15 February 2013 | 4475 views | 0Source: National ATM Council

The National ATM Council, Inc., a trade association representing U.S. Independent ATM providers and their suppliers, has sent a letter to MasterCard requesting a delay in implementation of EMV chip card liability shifts for Maestro international cards used at ATMs in the United States.

The letter was co-signed by NAC and 36 member organizations including leading ATM deployers, processors and manufacturers, many of whom attended the January 29th NAC-sponsored EMV ATM Summit Meeting in Dallas.

The letter requests that the Maestro card liability shift in the U.S. be delayed until:1. Formulation of a universally accepted AID (Application Identifier) consistent with financial transaction network routing requirements established under the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.2. Adequate time is provided for the ATM industry to test and deploy the AID, and all related hardware and software upgrades and change outs necessary to render the embedded U.S. ATM base of over 425,000 terminals EMV compliant.

MasterCard had announced in September 2011 that a liability shift for all counterfeit ATM transactions performed on the Maestro network would be implemented on April 19, 2013. More recently, on September 10, 2012, MasterCard announced that it would implement its liability shift hierarchy on October 1, 2016. This has created some confusion in the marketplace as to the status of the earlier announced liability shift for MasterCard's international Maestro cards used at U.S. ATMs.

Accordingly, NAC has requested that MasterCard clarify that the Maestro card liability shift was intended to be included in the overall October 1, 2016 EMV related liability shift plan. NAC has also requested that MasterCard consider aligning its liability shift plan for Maestro and all other domestic debit cards with VISA's recently announced October 1, 2017, EMV implementation deadline; providing a uniform and more realistic implementation timetable for all ATMs in the U.S. to be made EMV compliant.

"With little more than two months until MasterCard's April 19th liability shift for Maestro cards, there is still no universally applicable AID for EMV in the U.S.," says Bruce Renard, NAC Executivutive Director.

"And, even if one were available today that would meet federal laws on financial network routing, there is no financially or operationally realistic way the entire U.S. ATM embedded base can be expected to be made EMV compliant in the timeframe involved," continues Renard.

"In addition to developing a universal AID, the industry needs reasonable time for certification, deployment, testing and trouble shooting of hardware and software for all of the different ATM makes and models that comprise the approximately 425,000 ATMs currently deployed in the United States, and we are hopeful that MasterCard will acknowledge these realities and reconcile its timetable accordingly" he said.